Over the course of a tense few minutes Thursday afternoon, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd tried to pin down a Donald Trump spokesman on a simple point: From bogus online polls to “rigged” Google results to Sputnik News articles, why does the Trump campaign insist on “creating a reality that doesn’t exist?”
“Why do you think multiple polls, scientific polls have said Hillary Clinton won that debate by a 2-1 margin?” Todd asked communications advisor Jason Miller, noting that Trump had spoken about several instant reaction online polls as if they were methodologically sound.
Miller claimed “The polls that happened the night of the debate, the snap polls, the ones that happen online, those all showed Mr. Trump winning in a huge way.” Todd reminded him that such polls’ respondents are self-selecting, and that results can be easily distorted with computer programs.
“There’s TIME, there’s Variety,” Miller continued, undeterred, mentioning two online instant reaction polls.
“Those are all robot polling!” Todd said. “You’ve been doing this a while, you know those are bogus! They’re beyond unscientific.”
Miller moved on to Trump’s large crowds at rallies. “The energy and excitement are on our side,” he said, before explaining how the debate was rigged against Trump.
“Do you have any concern — he also has been talking about Google being rigged as well?” Todd asked. “There is a constant theme here that when things don’t go well, ‘something is rigged, something is rigged.’ That is not the best way to instill confidence in our democracy. Why does he do that?”
Miller avoided the question, instead pivoting to Clinton’s debate performance and polling among millennials.
The reality-check continued, brutal minute after brutal minute. Todd needled Miller on Trump’s debate prep (“we talked to supporters at a rally in Melbourne who all thought he did poorly!”) and his unfounded Google conspiracies (“An article from Sputnik?!”) before the sweet release of a commercial break.
Watch below:
I generally don’t load videos if the article has the important content. But I imagine Chuck had tears in his eyes as he did this.
Chuck? Are you finally coming back to us? No more false equivalency?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Raise the issue, make you wonder. That’s all they can do. They just put out one unsubstantiated allegation after another and hope to get people talking about them. Non existent reality is all they’ve got and they’re not even trying to hide that anymore.
Because he is a psychopath who makes Nixon look almost morally sound. Next question?
Well, I’ll be damned – Chuck does have two brain cells to rub together? Whoda thunk?